Interview with Joel Northrup, founder and CEO of Deep Lawn, recorded at the NALP Elevate Conference 2024 in Charlotte, NC. Northrup discusses his background in the lawn care industry and how he built an AI-powered platform that automates lawn measurement, pricing, and quoting for lawn care and pest control businesses. Topics include inefficiencies in traditional sales and estimating processes, the role of AI and automation in customer acquisition and pricing, and the future of technology in the green industry. # Channel Identity Observations — Video: "AI in Lawn Care: Instant Quotes & Smarter Growth" ## Video Format - **Interview format**: Host (Paul) interviews a guest (Joel, founder of "Deep Lawn") at an industry event. - Evidence: *"Joel it's great sitting down with you yeah thanks for having me Paul"* and closing *"it's great seeing you here this week."* - Casual, conversational trade-show style Q&A with follow-up questions. - Evidence: *"what's your customer base look like now between pest versus lawn"*, *"what are you most excited about here for the future"*. ## Context / Setting - Recorded at **NALP 2024** ("NP week" / industry event), based on title hashtags (#NALP2024) and transcript: *"Joel this is the end of NP week here"*. - Guest mentions attending **Pest World**: *"we are at pest world you know a couple weeks ago."* ## Intended Audience - **Lawn care and pest control business owners/operators** — questions center on business operations: quoting, close rates, CRMs, route density. - Evidence: references to *FieldRoutes, Aspire, Service Autopilot, Jobber, LMN* CRMs; discussion of cost-to-acquire a customer and margins. - Industry professionals familiar with trade norms (e.g., driving to properties to measure turf). ## Claimed Scope / Subject Matter - **Technology and AI adoption in the green/service industry**, with emphasis on: - AI property measurement: *"uses satellite and aerial imagery to measure property with AI"* - Instant quoting/e-commerce: *"homeowners can go on search their address get an instant price"* - Industry tech trends: robotic mowers, smart spray sensors. ## Creator Self-Description vs. Demonstrated Presentation - **No explicit channel self-description** appears in the transcript or title (no "welcome to my channel" statement). - **Demonstrated presentation**: interviewer acts as an industry-insider host asking founder/backstory questions — *"before you got into technology at your lawn care business… what was that like"*, *"how long did it take you to build this."* ## Notable Demonstrated Patterns - Host shares audience-aware framing: *"I don't know if a lot of folks here probably remember back in the day lawnsite"* — wait, this is the **guest's** statement; the host's questions assume audience familiarity with industry pain points (*"probably 50% of the people here in the lawn care and lawn maintenance space do that"* — also guest). - Host asks practical, adoption-oriented questions: *"does deep lawn then tie into any of the estimation software"*, *"what percentage of your clients actually put that tool on the website."* - No product sponsorship disclosure present in transcript; the guest's product (Deep Lawn) receives extended airtime via questions. # Delivery Observation: "AI in Lawn Care" — Interview at NALP 2024 ## Format - **Two-person interview**: an interviewer ("Paul") asks short, direct questions; the speaker ("Joel") gives extended narrative answers. - The interviewer frequently **echoes and summarizes** Joel's points back before moving on: > "so I guess your system at the end of the day allows accurate estimation and pricing right out of the gate" > "so now using deep lawn it's an instantaneous process basically" - Questions often end with **"...is that how that works?"** or **"yeah?"** confirmation checks. ## Tone - **Conversational, unrehearsed**: frequent filler and self-correction throughout — "um," "you know," repeated phrases: > "particularly around um getting quotes in the hands of customers helping you know homeowners have changed dramatically" - **Casual register** with colloquialisms: "dismal," "shot through the roof," "a total nerd about lawn care businesses." ## Vocabulary & Recurring Phrases - **"get quotes in the hands of customers"** — repeated nearly verbatim at [107] and [119], a clear staple phrase. - **"you know"** — extremely frequent connective across nearly every answer; appears multiple times per response. - **Named brand/product dropping**: Real Estate sources, "Field routes... Aspire... service autopilot and a jobber LMN," "Amazon," "Uber." - **Quantified claims** as a consistent habit: > "our close rates were around 15% which is dismal... up to around 50%" > "probably 90% or in lawn care... probably 10% in past" > "we ended the year you know 15 to 20% margins" ## Teaching / Explanation Habits - **Problem → Solution structure**: Joel frames the origin story as pain points from his own business, then pivots to the product built to solve them: > "the reason we built Deon was to solve some of the issues that we faced at our lawn care company" - **Concrete walkthroughs** when describing product flow: > "homeowners can go on search their address get an instant price for their for their services and then sign up" - **Contrast framing**: pairs "historically" against the new state: > "historically the the quoting process... was very um human intensive" - **Anecdotal credibility-building**: personal history (high school lawn business, brother, CS degree, Samsung) precedes technical claims. ## Communication Patterns - **Willingness to admit failure**, framed as a learning arc: > "it was kind of a failure it didn't quite work" - **Enthusiasm escalation at the end**: doubled phrases when discussing smart spray tech: > "I do think I do think there's a ton of runoff" > "we've seen a ton we've seen a ton with the robotic mowers" - Answers tend to **run long and self-directed**, only lightly interrupted by the interviewer. ## Uncertainty Notes - Product name is inconsistently transcribed ("deepan," "Deon," "deep lawn," "deep blon") — the actual brand name cannot be confirmed from this transcript alone. - Filler-word frequency appears high, but exact counts are unreliable given the automated transcript quality. # Position Record: AI in Lawn Care — Deep Lawn Interview (NALP 2024) ## Speakers - **Joel** — Founder of Deep Lawn; previously ran a lawn care business in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (interviewee) - **Paul** — Interviewer (identified by name in transcript; no other metadata supplied) --- ## Claims & Positions ### Deep Lawn's Core Product (Joel) - **Problem framing**: Quoting in lawn care/pest control was historically **human-intensive** — staff drove to properties to measure. - **Solution**: Proprietary AI released in **2021** that uses **satellite and aerial imagery** to measure properties automatically. - **E-commerce tool**: Companies embed it on their websites; homeowners search their address, get an **instant price**, and sign up. ### Measurement Capabilities (Joel, responding to Paul's question) - Measures all turf on a property and shows the customer (e.g., "the lawn is 2,100 ft"). - Measures the **perimeter and house footprint**; pulls building/interior square footage from **real estate sources**. ### Integrations (Joel) - Integrates with CRMs in the space: **FieldRoutes, Aspire, Service Autopilot, Jobber, LMN**. - Pulls pricing data and pushes order, credit card, customer, and lawn details into the CRM. ### Joel's Background - In lawn care since **2011**, started a business with his brother in high school in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; began with push mowers. - Acquired smaller companies; grew the business ~8 years; **sold in 2019**. - Earned a CS degree focused on AI; worked at **Samsung Semiconductor** implementing AI while building Deep Lawn on the side. ### Building Deep Lawn - First iteration built in **2017** for his own lawn care business — he calls it **"kind of a failure"** because the AI and software pieces didn't come together; it was shut down. - Rebuilt starting **2019** with developers, including his brother (full-stack developer); released the product **late 2021** (took "at least 2 years"). ### Customer Base (Joel) - ~**90% lawn care / 10% pest control**; goal is roughly **75/25**. - Exhibited at Pest World a couple weeks prior. - **~80% of clients** use the e-commerce tool on their website; premium-priced companies may prefer to talk to customers and use Deep Lawn internally instead. ### Lessons from Running the Lawn Care Business (Joel) - Cites **Lawnsite forum** as a key source of advice growing up; mentions **Rob Reyle at Oasis (Ohio)** helping equip trucks/vans. - **Problem 1 — overexpansion**: Expanded one year to five satellite markets (Quad Cities, Des Moines, Wisconsin); end-of-year numbers showed all profit came from **dense routes**; scaled back to dominate existing neighborhoods, and margins went from break-even to **15–20%**. - **Problem 2 — sales process**: Originally drove to properties with a measuring wheel and gave paper quotes. After tracking lead-to-quote time, reduced to **15–30 minutes over the phone**; close rates rose from ~**15% to ~50%**. - Notes **~50% of companies** in the space still drive to properties today, though "it's changing." ### Future Outlook (Joel, answering Paul's closing question) - Excited about **robotic mowers** and hardware generally. - **Most excited about smart spray technologies**: sensors tracking which chemicals are sprayed where and in what quantity, producing reports for managers, companies, and government; real-time feedback to technicians on over/under application; **proof of work** for homeowners. - Reasoning: he believes there is significant **chemical runoff and waste**, and companies "dramatically overspend on chemicals"; Deep Lawn works with a couple of the companies in that space. --- ## Qualifications & Tensions Preserved - Joel explicitly labels his 2017 first attempt a **failure** — success was not linear. - Adoption of the e-commerce tool is high (~80%) but not universal; some premium companies deliberately keep phone-based sales — a stated counter-trend. - Paul's remark that driving out to estimate "seems bizarre" is answered by Joel's note that it was — and remains — **industry-normal practice**. # Speaker Attribution Record ## Video Overview - **Title:** AI in Lawn Care: Instant Quotes & Smarter Growth #NALP2024 #ServiceIndustry #AI - **Format:** Interview/conversation (likely recorded at an industry event — "end of NP week" referenced in dialogue) ## Speakers & Roles ### **Paul** — Interviewer / Host - Conducts the interview; asks questions about Deep Lawn, the guest's background, and industry trends. - Identified by name: *"Joel it's great sitting down with you… thanks for having me Paul"* and closing *"yeah thanks Pa[ul] appreciate it."* ### **Joel** — Guest (Founder of Deep Lawn / "Deon" as transcribed) - Primary respondent throughout; founder of an AI lawn-measurement and e-commerce quoting platform. - Personal background stated in transcript: started a lawn care business in high school (~2011) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa with his brother; sold it in 2019; CS degree focused on AI; worked implementing AI at Samsung Semiconductor. > Note: No curated metadata supplied; speaker identities ("Paul," "Joel") and company name derive solely from in-transcript statements. ## Provenance & Referenced Sources ### **Third-Party Products/Companies Cited by Joel** - **CRM integrations:** FieldRoutes ("Field routs"), Aspire, Service Autopilot, Jobber, LMN - **Real estate data sources** (unnamed): used to pull building square footage - **Satellite and aerial imagery** (provider unnamed): used for AI property measurement ### **Third-Party People/Companies Cited** - **Rob Reyle at Oasis** — Ohio lawn care company that helped equip trucks/vans for Joel's original business - **Lawnsite forum** — online community Joel cites as a source of early industry advice ### **Event/Industry References** - **Pest World** — Joel states he attended "a couple weeks ago" - **NALP / NP week** — closing question references "the end of NP week here" (matches title hashtag #NALP2024) ## Promotional Content - **Flagged:** The interview substantially promotes Joel's company **Deep Lawn**, including its AI measurement tool, e-commerce tool, instant quoting, CRM integrations, and pricing claims (e.g., customer base composition ~90% lawn care / 10% pest). - **Flagged:** Joel endorses unnamed "smart spray" sensor companies ("we work with a couple of them") — third-party promotion without naming the companies. ## Unavailable Evidence Channels - **Comments:** No comment availability information present in source material. - **Curated metadata:** None supplied (no channel, description, or date metadata). historically the the quoting process for lawn care pest control companies was very um human intensive people would have to drive to a property so we started deepan to really solve that and what Deon does is we released our proprietary AI in 2021 that automatically uses satellite and aerial imagery to measure property with AI and then around that we built a couple tools one of them is our e-commerce tool so lawn care companies pest control companies they can place our e Commerce tool on their website homeowners can go on search their address get an instant price for their services and then sign up Joel it's great sitting down with you yeah thanks for having me Paul I see at pest I see at landscape let's talk about deep lawn what you got going on over there yeah so it goes back uh I've been in the lawn care space since 2011 um when I was in high school I started a lawn care business with my brother in Cedar Rapids Iowa just small Midwestern town and we started in just mowing we'd push the mowers down the street and mow neighbors properties and then when I was able to drive we started to build a business we acquired actually a couple smaller companies in the area and then um we grew that business for about eight years and then in 2019 we sold the business and I actually went into work for in Tech so I had I got a CS degree um focused on AI and I started helping um Samsung semiconductor Implement AI in their products well while I was doing that uh on the side I started building Deon and the reason we built Deon was to solve some of the issues that we faced at our lawn care company particularly around um getting quotes in the hands of customers go a little higher with the a little particularly around um getting quotes in the hands of customers helping you know homeowners have changed dramatically over the years Co accelerated um everyone is used to Amazon they're used to Uber they're used to you know purchasing things online um and historically the the quoting process for lawn care pest control companies was very um human intensive people would have to drive to a property so we started Deon to really solve that and what Deon does is we released our proprietary AI in 2021 that automatically uses satellite and aerial imagery to measure property with AI and then around that we built a couple tools one of them is our e-commerce tool so lawn care companies pest control companies they can place our e-commerce tool on their website homeowners can go on search their address get an instant price for their for their services and then sign up and so the does your system then measure the size of the plot as well as the size of the structure yeah so it it will measure all of the turf on a property it will measure that out and show the customer and they can actually review like the lawn is 2100 ft for example like you're able to see that yeah it'll tell you how many lawn it will do the perimeter of the house the house footprint we pull in from Real Estate sources so it'll pull in um you know building square footage interior square footage all of that and they can use that data um to then you know put together a quote get in the hands of the customer so does deep blon then tie into any of the estimation software or anything like that that would allow you know if a customer gets on the website searches for their house I guess they get pricing data automatically is that how that works yeah so we integrate with a lot of the crms in the space You Know Field routs um some of our a lot of our customers use Aspire um service autopilot and a jobber LMN and that data you know we integrate we'll pull in pricing data and then that data will get pushed into the CRM so if an order comes in the credit card data will get pushed into the CRM order details customer details lawn details and all that so I guess your system at the end of the day allows accurate estimation and pricing right out of the gate yeah yeah how long did it take you so you know you sold a business you decided to get into computer science how long did it take you to build this so I started I built the first iteration of this company in 2017 actually for my lawn care business um but it was kind of a failure it didn't quite work I didn't really I couldn't really put all the pieces together with the AI component the software um so we kind of shut that down um and then in 2019 we started working with a few of my devs my brother is a full full stack developer um we started building it out and and I think it it took us at least 2 years to put it together as we didn't we didn't actually release the product until late 20 2021 so then thus far I mean you've called it deep lawn but you're also seem to be penetrating pest very heavily what's your customer base look like now between pest versus lawn yeah we're mostly in the lawn care space most of our customers do lawn applications lawn care probably 90% or in lawn care Lawn Maintenance probably 10% in past we would love to love to get into more pest we are at pest world you know a couple weeks ago um we would love to get to the point where we're you know maybe 75 25 lawn care and pest so before you got into technology at your lawn care business I mean what was that like coming out of school and running one of these things from basically from scratch what sort of problems you run into I learned a lot actually I don't know if a lot of folks here probably remember back in the day lawnsite it was the Forum online where all of of the major Lawn Care players would hang out on and just talk so growing up in high school I would spend a lot of time on there in my free time you know I was a total nerd about Lawn Care businesses and growing my business and I got a lot of great advice from folks in the industry folks that are now a customers of ours actually um you know like for instance Rob reyle at Oasis um great company in Ohio um there he really helped us build out our trucks our vans equip them all of that but I would hang out and I would just talk to other industry veterans and they gave you know amazing advice and all that so what sort of problems did you run into when you're running that thing there's quite a few problems so I know there there always is that's what I want to hear about um so one of them was we expanded too quickly so we because we were in the midwest we were in a smaller Market there's only 150,000 people in Cedar abbis Iowa and you can you know there's kind of a ceiling on how much you can grow so we one year we expanded we invested a lot of money into building satellite branches in other cities and in one year we expanded to five other markets the Quad Cities um you know multiple markets there De Moine uh up into Wisconsin and so we got ere extended um and what when I ran the numbers at the end of that next year we realized that all of our profits came from our dense routes so what we did is we actually cut off some of those territories and we decided to scale back and just focus on really dominating the neighborhoods that we were in and when we did that our profits shot through the roof you know we didn't end the year Break Even we ended the year you know 15 to 20% margins like we wanted um so that was that was a big issue and then another issue was the sales process so you know when we started the company I or one of my salespeople we we would get a we would get a lead on our website we would drive to the property we would pull out a measuring wheel and we would measure the measure all the turf on a property and give a paper quote so that process we slowly were able to bring the time in one year we started tracking the time it takes from getting a lead getting a prospect or a lead to giving a quote and when we started tracking that um we were able when we started measuring it we were able to start bringing those numbers down and eventually we got to the point where we would give a quote over the phone and usually within 15 to 30 minutes we would get a quote in the hands of the customer and that that dramatically brought up our close rates cuz before I think our close rates were around 15% which is dismal uh but after after we started implementing some of those systems and stuff we were able to get our close rates up to around 50% which was dramatically better and helped you know helped all our numbers yeah I mean it seems bizarre that you guys would even take the time to drive out there as opposed to just estimating it over the phone yeah well you know we were doing what was normal in the industry many many C companies today still drive to the property and they measure like it's very common probably 50% of the people here in the lawn care and lawn maintenance space do that and it's changing it's definitely changing big time but um you know we we kind of were just doing what the crowd was doing but when when we crunch the numbers we realized the cost to to sell the cost to acquire a customer included the hour of gas the hour of the salesman's time driving there an hour back and then the negotiation and the you know paper and all that it just it just didn't make sense so now using deep lawn it's an instantaneous process basically yeah yep customers can get a price instantly on the website or they can call if they call a company they can pull up deep lawn and give a quote right over the phone I mean what percentage your your clients actually put that tool on the website versus just keeping it so that the customer actually has to call the office more and more um probably 80% use our e-commerce tool you know there are many that want to just talk to a customer if they're more of a premium priced they may want to talk to the customer and use deepan internally and then you know instead of actually going to the property do more of setting expectations talking about how their company's different why are they premium priced uh but but more and more homeowners are used to the instant gratification being able to order instantly um so we're seeing more and more adoption you know Joel this is the end of NP week here and I I guess one final question I have for you is you know what are you most excited about here for the future so I I'm excited about all the tech that's coming uh and the hardware too so we've seen a ton we've seen a ton with the robotic mowers in the space definitely excited about that but probably most of all I'm excited about some of the tech technology with smart spray technologies so there's a couple companies out there that are start that are building smart sensors that track what chemicals are sprayed where on a property and how much and they they put together reports so managers companies um the government can see what sprayed we and immediately in real time give feedback to technicians if they over apply under apply also proof of work homeowners they can't say you know we're worried we we didn't think you came out or you guys never came you have proof I'm most excited about that because I do think I do think there's a ton of runoff there's a lot of waste for chemicals companies dramatically overspend on chemicals a lot of time and I think those tools that are coming and you know we work with a couple of them couple of the companies that do it um they are going to really change the space that's awesome and I think at some point you're going to have to come down and visit us in PR when we can talk about this but it's great seeing you here this week yeah thanks Pa appreciate it absolutely Jo